[Vasuki]

A very shocking & unfortunate incident in Kannur, Kerala. Two lives were lost including that of a pregnant lady. The passengers in the rear 3 adults & a child escaped. The husband & the pregnant lady were not able to get down due to locks getting jammed or unresponsive.


The vehicle is a Maruti car, looks like S-Cross, need confirmation. As per initial inference, a short circuit is the cause of fire.

Link

[sandsun7]

Originally Posted by Vasuki

A very shocking & unfortunate incident in Kannur,

The vehicle is a Maruti car, looks like S-Cross,

Very sad indeed. As per another report, the couple who perished were heading to hospital after the lady got labor pain.

The car is Maruti Suzuki S-presso.

[epiccross]

Originally Posted by Vasuki

The vehicle is a Maruti car, looks like S-Cross, need confirmation. As per initial inference, a short circuit is the cause of fire.
Link

OMG just downright horrible! It's an S-Presso, but I don't understand how they couldn't get out and escape in time? It's usually contained in the engine bay for some time, right?

Just shocking.

[VNair]

Originally Posted by epiccross

OMG just downright horrible! It's an S-Presso, but I don't understand how they couldn't get out and escape in time? It's usually contained in the engine bay for some time, right?

Just shocking.

Very unfortunate. Just read that the front doors were jammed and they couldn't open it.

[pratyaksh]

Terrible news coming in from Kerala. I just wanted to check which car would burn like this and leave the front occupants locked in! And the car is none other than Zero/One Star Rated Maruti S-Presso.

Shouldn't these cars be banned from the roads? Anyone know why it burnt like it did.

NDTV

[kosjam]

While I agree that S-Presso is one of the worst product offerings from MSIL, we should reserve judgement on what caused the deaths of these unfortunate people. the crash safety rating does not calculate the fire potential of a vehicle, in which there are just too many variables.

We need more information before we start blaming either the car or the occupants...

[balenoed_]

Quite a tragedy that is. Especially when hearing that the couple leaves behind an elder daughter.

Originally Posted by Vasuki

The husband & the pregnant lady were not able to get down due to locks getting jammed or unresponsive.

As per initial inference, a short circuit is the cause of fire.

Isn't that quite surprising. That the doors getting jammed in the event of a fire and probably due to the central locking control circuits are damaged. But why is there no a redundancy in the design where the door can be opened from inside under whatever circumstances.

[windrider]

First reports coming in is that the fire started somewhere near the stearing column/dashboard area. Probably short circuit from the wiring of additional accessories etc. Whats surprising is how fast the car was completely engulfed in flames in a matter of seconds. The power locks on the front doors stopped working and the husband and wife were unable to escape. Looking at how the MVD and Kerala govt works, expecting a complete ban on additional accessories soon

[ABHI_1512]

Any car can catch fire and due to variety of reasons. A proper enquiry should give us the real reason behind the car catching fire I suppose. Let’s not make this incident into another of Maruti bashing thread just because of one star that S Presso got !!

Very unfortunate incident, prayers for the departed souls and condolences to their near ones.

[m3t4ph0r1c]

Really sad news. Being burnt alive is just a terrible way to go.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time I am hearing such incident in which the car was an entry level Maruthi. Last year an alto caught fire and killed a family of 5 - More info here..

[Jeroen]

Terrible tragedy! Awful.

As mentioned the one zero safety rating has no bearing as such an unfortunate fire.

There are a few things though. How could the fire spread so rapidly?. I honestly don’t really know but I am not aware of any regulations with respect to using fire proof or at least fire resistant materials. Most materials used in car interiors are highly flammable, unfortunately.

The other thing is of course why could they not open the doors from inside? Sure, they might have had power locks, but the normal inner door handle should be just mechanic? Not sure what my cars do, to be honest. I will test them.

Only on high end cars, e.g. Tesla, do we see just a button to open a door. And there have been a few accidents with those as well. Because there is no mechanical back up.

Jeroen

[bejoy]

The engine bay was clean so the fuel was not the cause of fire. Likely it was due to electrical overloading/short circuit.


Images from the review thread. I am not a fan of these kind of locks. I find it a bit tedious to unlock normally, imagine if someone is panicked. Also, the central un-locking would have got disabled due to the fire, thus both driver and passenger needing to open the locks manually. And if someone is used to central unlocking, the thought of manually unlocking will not even strike at that moment.



The fuse box seems to be towards the right and according to the reports - the area where the fire originated. Likely there were accessories added to existing wiring that caused to overheat?

[splitsecond]

As per first police reports accessories like rear power windows and reverse parking sensors/camera were added in this vehicle, the video is very frightening, how quickly the fire engulfed the front of the car.

[for_cars1]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

...... quite surprising. That the doors getting jammed in the event of a fire and probably due to the central locking control circuits are damaged. But why is there no a redundancy in the design where the door can be opened from inside under whatever circumstances.

Every car has a manual override to the electrical locking mechanism.

Some of the european versions have the manual override integrated into the single pull/open lever so that pulling the lever from inside always unlocks the door and opens the same. This is a much faster and sure shot way to open the door

The Japanese cars typically have a seperate locking lever and a door open lever, so its a two step process.
During everyday use, the central locking operates the lock/unlock lever automatically so most people are just used to pulling the door open lever only.

In an emergency, if the electrical/central locking fails to release the lock/unlock lever, the occupants can still manually turn this lever and the pull the door open lever, but they fail to do this in panic.

The only time the manual override can also fail is due to a crashed/damaged door or due to fire melting the plastic panel of the doors damaging the manual override.

[Night Raven]

Originally Posted by for_cars1

Every car has a manual override to the electrical locking mechanism.

Some of the european versions have the manual override integrated into the single pull/open lever so that pulling the lever from inside always unlocks the door and opens the same. This is a much faster and sure shot way to open the door

True. I remember our Punto had this mechanism. Any door can be opened from inside anytime irrespective of central locking status by just pulling the lever. (At the rear this gets overridden by the child locking system) Even the hatch had a mechanism to unlock it from within the car, just in case the doors are deformed and jammed in an accident. One among the many brilliant things I miss about that car.